Defend
the Syrian Revolution – Defeat Assad – Drive the Russians, NATO, and All Other
Foreign Aggressors Out of Syria!

On the 5th Anniversary of the Start of the Syrian Revolution: For an International Solidarity Campaign in
Support of the Liberation Struggle of the Syrian Workers and Fallahin!

A Joint Call by the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and the Agrupación de Lucha Socialista (Mexico),
8 March 2016

On the 5th anniversary since it began, the Syrian Revolution is facing grave peril. The Syrian people face
unspeakable misery as a result of the never-ending terror by the Assad regime in addition to the ongoing aggression of the Great Powers. According to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research,
470,000 people have already died since the beginning of the civil war and 11.5% of the country’s entire population has been either been killed or wounded, while an incredible 45% of the Syrian
people have been displaced!

Today, with the help of the Russian blitzkrieg and thousands of Iranian-led troops, the Assad regime threatens to
liquidate Free Aleppo. The Great Powers – Russia, the US, France, the UK, and Germany – are all engaged in a murderous bombing campaign which, under the pretext of the “War on Terror,” is
directed primarily against the Syrian rebel forces and the civilian population. In addition, not only are Iranian-led and Hezbollah forces intervening in the Syrian civil war, but the reactionary
regimes of Turkey and Saudi Arabia threaten to do the same. Furthermore the reactionary Daesh (the so-called “Islamic State”) threatens the Syrian Revolution from within. Unfortunately,
the leadership of the PKK/YPG – while defending the legitimate right of the Kurdish people for national self-determination – fails to support the Syrian Revolution, and instead is collaborating
with the Assad regime as well as with the US and Russia.

The Syrian Revolution faces yet an additional grave danger: the Great Powers are determined to liquidate the revolutionary
process in Syria by imposing the so-called Geneva “Negotiations.” This is nothing but an attempt to repeat the counter-revolutionary “Oslo peace process" which ended in the sell-out of the first
Palestinian Intifada in 1994.

At the same time, the European governments are either entirely blockading or barracking hundreds of thousands of Syrian
refugees who have been forced to flee their war-torn country. Rightwing racist and fascist forces are whipping up hatred against the Syrian refugees or are even violently attacking them.
Islamophobia has become the new Anti-Semitism of Europe.

We denounce all those forces who claim to be socialists (Stalinists, Castro-Chavismo proponents, the Party of the European
Left, various pseudo-Trotskyists) but, who in fact, are betraying the masses by not taking a progressive stand in these crucial fights which are a vital part of the world class struggle. These
hypocritical forces support – either directly or indirectly – the Assad regime or take a neutral stand in the civil war instead of supporting the Syrian Revolution. This is particularly true for
the two Syrian "Communist" Parties ("Unified" as well as "Bakdash") which for decades have shamefully been a part of Assad's ruling "National Progressive Front."

Likewise we denounce those “progressive” parties in Europe who fail to oppose the advancing counter-revolutionary offensive
(militarization, the “State of Emergency” regime, etc.), who aren’t fighting for “Open Borders” (i.e., defending the right of refugees to freely come to Europe) and who fail to fight for full
equality of migrants (equal civil rights, equal wages, equality of their native language in schools and public administration, etc.).

The Syrian Revolution dramatically demonstrates the painful absence of a revolutionary party rooted in the working class.
Only such a party would be able to advance and organize the numerous heroic local initiatives of Syrian workers, youth and fallahin to administer their neighborhoods and arm themselves against
the enemies of the people. It would advance the formation of independent trade unions. Only such a party would be able to combine the democratic struggle against the dictatorship with a socialist
perspective of a Workers’ and Fallahin Government based on popular councils and militias which would destroy the Baathist state apparatus, expropriate the bourgeoisie, and take over the
country’s wealth in order to put it in the service of the people.

It is only because of the absence of such a party that corrupt elements, as well as petty-bourgeois pro-Western or Islamist
forces, have been able to gain a leading position amongst the Syrian popular anti-Assad forces.

As a matter of fact, the Syrian Revolution – and the Arab Revolution in general – the struggle against Great Power aggression
in North Africa and the Middle East, and the struggle against militarization and racism in Europe are all inextricably linked. They are a litmus test for all revolutionaries and a dividing line
between authentic Marxism and revisionism. Revolutionaries can only take a correct approach by combining these struggles on the basis of the program of permanent revolution, proletarian
internationalism, and Marxist anti-imperialism.

As Marxist revolutionaries we stand for the unconditional defense of the Syrian Revolution against the Assad dictatorship as
well as against the brutal aggression of the Great Powers and various regional foreign states. We combine this stand with the revolutionary and socialist perspective of aWorkers and Fellahin Republic. We unconditionally support the struggle of the Syrian people without giving political support to
its petty-bourgeois secular and Islamist leaderships. Likewise we support the struggle of the Kurdish people for national self-determination without giving political support to the
pro-imperialist PKK/YPG leadership. We support the resistance of the Syrian people against the aggression of the Great Powers in order to drive them out of the region and call upon the
international workers’ and popular movements to support this struggle. We defend the migrants, especially the Muslim migrants, against the growing wave of racism. We call for the creation of an
international solidarity movement of workers’, youth and migrant organizations to fight for “Open Borders” and full equality of migrants and refugees. Such a movement must also fight against
militarization and the “State of Emergency” regime in Europe. We undertake such a struggle as part of our efforts to unite all authentic revolutionary forces and build a Revolutionary World
Party.

The RCIT and the ALS call upon all workers’, popular and migrant organizations to join forces in an international campaign of
solidarity with the Syrian Revolution. Such a campaign should be based on the following three pillars.

* Defend the Syrian Revolution! Defeat the Assad Regime! No to Daesh/IS!

* Drive the Russians, NATO, and all other Foreign Aggressors out of Syria! No to the Great Power-imposed “Negotiations”
Aimed at Liquidating the Syrian Revolution!

* Open Europe’s Borders for all Syrian Refugees! Put an end to the Racist and Islamophobic Backlash in Europe!

We call upon all those who support these demands to contact us and join such an international solidarity campaign.